Spiritual Science and MedicineLecture III

Schmidt Number: S-4040

On-line since: 10th March, 2000

I PROPOSE
to incorporate all the inquiries and requests I have
received in the course of these lectures. Of course they contain
repetitions, so I shall group the answers together, as far as
possible. For it makes a difference whether we discuss what has been
asked or suggested, before or after a certain basis has been laid
down. Therefore, I shall try, in today's address, to establish such a
basis for every future consideration, taking into account what I have
had from you in the way of requests and suggestions.

You will remember that we first considered the form and inner forces
of the osseous and muscular systems, that yesterday we reviewed
illustrative examples of the process of disease, and the requisites of
curative treatment; and that we took as our starting point on that
occasion, the circulation in the cardiac system.

Today I shall describe the introductory principles of a conception
that may be derived from a deeper study of human nature regarding the
possibility and the essentials of healing in general. Special points
will be dealt with in subsequent comments, but it is my intention to
begin with these basic principles.

If we examine the medical curriculum of today we shall find, roughly
speaking, that therapeutics are dealt with concurrently with pathology,
although there is no clear and evident connection between the two. And
in therapeutics at the present time, purely empirical methods
generally prevail. It is hardly possible to discover a rational cure,
combining practice with sound principles, in the domain of
therapeutics. We are also aware that in the course of the nineteenth
century, these deficiencies in the medical conception led to what was
termed the Nihilist School. This Nihilism laid all stress on
diagnosis, was content to recognise disease, and on the whole, was
sceptical as regards any rationale of healing.

But in a purely rational approach to medicine, we might surely expect
something suggesting lines of treatment to be given together with
diagnosis? The connection between therapeutics and pathology must not
be external only. The nature of disease must be recognised to such a
degree that some idea can be formed from it as to the appropriate
methods of the curative process.

And thus the question arises: How far does the whole intricate web of
natural processes admit of curative Media and curative processes? An
interesting axiom of Paracelsus has often been quoted, to this effect:
the medical man must pass Nature's examination. But it cannot be
maintained that the more recent literature dealing with Paracelsus has
made much use of this axiom; for, if it had, there would be definite
attempts made to unravel the curative processes from Nature herself.
Of course, there are such attempts, in those processes of disease in
which Nature herself gives counsel. But these examples are more or
less exceptions, for there have already been injuries of one kind or
another; whereas a genuine study of Nature would be a study of normal
processes.

This leads to a further inquiry. Is there really any possibility of
observing normal processes — in the current sense of the term — in
Nature, in order to gather from them some conception of the healing
method? You will immediately perceive the serious difficulty in this
connection. We can of course, only observe curative processes in
Nature in a normal way, if diseased processes are normally present in
Nature. So we are confronted with this: Are there processes of disease
in Nature itself, so that we can pass Nature's examination and thus
learn how to heal them?

We shall try today to advance somewhat nearer to the answering of this
question, which will be fully dealt with in the course of these
lectures. But one can say at once in this connection that the path
here indicated has been made impassable by the natural scientific
basis of medicine as practised today. This means very “heavy going,”
in the face of prevailing assumptions, for curiously enough, the
materialistic tendency of the nineteenth century has led to a complete
misconception of the functions of that system of the human organism
with which we must now deal in sequence to the osseous, muscular and
cardiac systems, viz. the nervous system.

It has gradually become the fashion to burden the nervous system with
all the soul functions and to resolve all that man accomplishes of a
soul and spirt nature into parallel processes which are then supposed
to be found in the nervous system. As you are aware, I have felt bound
to protest against this kind of nature study in my book
Von Seelenraetseln
Concerning the Problems of the Soul.

In this work, I first of all tried (and many empirical data confirm
this truth, as we shall see) to prove, that only the processes proper
to the formation of images are connected with the nervous system,
whilst all the processes of feeling are linked — not indirectly but
directly — with the rhythmic processes of the organism. The Natural
Scientist of today assumes — as a rule — that the feeling processes
are not directly connected with the rhythmic system, but that these
bodily rhythms are transmitted to the nervous system, and thus
indirectly, the feeling life is expressed through the nerve system.

Further I have tried to show that the whole life of our will depends
directly on the metabolic system and not through the intermediary of
the nerves. Thus the nervous system does nothing more than perceive
will processes. The nervous system does not put into action the “will”
but that which takes place through will within us, is perceived.

All the views maintained in that book can be thoroughly corroborated
by biological facts, whereas the contrary assumption of the exclusive
relation of the nerve system to the soul, cannot be proved at all. I
should like to put this question to healthy unbiased reason: how can
the fact that a so-called motor nerve and a sensory nerve can be cut,
and subsequently grown together, so that they form one nerve, be
harmonised with the assumption that there are two kinds of nerves:
motor and sensory? There are not two kinds of nerves. What are termed
“motor” nerves are those sensory nerves that perceive the movements of
our limbs, that is, the process of metabolism in our limbs when we
will. Thus in the motor nerves we have sensory nerves that merely
perceive processes in ourselves, while the sensory nerves proper
perceive the external world.

There is much here of enormous significance to medicine, but it can
only be appreciated if the true facts are faced. For it is
particularly difficult to preserve the distinction between motor and
sensory nerves, in respect of the symptoms enumerated yesterday, as
appertaining to tuberculosis. Therefore reasonable scientists have for
some time assumed that every nerve has in itself a double conduction,
one from the centre to the periphery, and also one from the periphery
to the centre. Thus each motor nerve would have a complete double
“circuit,” and if the explanation of any condition — such as hysteria
— is to be based on the nervous system, one has to assume the
existence of two nerve currents running in opposite directions. You
see: as soon as one gets down to the facts, one must postulate
qualities of the nervous system directly contrary to the accepted
theories. Inasmuch as these conceptions about the nervous system have
arisen, access has actually been barred to all knowledge of what goes
on in the organism below the nervous system as in hysteria for
example. In the preceding lecture, we defined this as caused by
metabolic changes; and these are only perceived and registered by the
nerves. All this should have received attention. But instead of such
attentive study, there has been a wholesale attribution of symptoms
and conditions to “nerves” alone, and hysteria was diagnosed as a kind
of vulnerability and disequilibrium of the nervous system. This has
led further. It is undeniable that among the more remote causes of
hysteria are some that originate in the soul: grief, disappointment,
disillusion, or deep-seated desires which cannot be fulfilled and may
lead to hysterical manifestations. But those who have, so to speak,
detached all the rest of the human organism from the life of the soul,
and only admit a genuine direct connection between that life and the
nervous system, have been compelled to attribute everything to
“nerves.” Thus there has arisen a view which does not correspond in
the least with the facts, and furthermore offers no available link
between the soul and the human organism. The soul-forces are only
admitted to contact with the nervous system, and are excluded from the
human organism as a whole. Or, alternatively, motor nerves are
invented, and expected to exercise an influence on the circulation,
etc., an influence which is entirely hypothetical.

These errors helped to mislead the best brains, when hypnotism and
“suggestion” came into the field of scientific discussion.
Extraordinary cases have been experienced and recorded, though
certainly some time ago. Thus, ladies afflicted with hysteria
completely mystified and misled the most capable physicians, who
swallowed wholesale all that these patients told them, instead of
inquiring into the causes within the organism. In this connection, it
is perhaps of interest to remind you of the mistake made by Schleich,
in the case of a male hysteric. Schleich was fated to fall into this
error, although he was quite well accustomed to think over matters
thoroughly. A man who had pricked his finger with an inky pen, came to
him and said that the accident would certainly prove fatal that same
night, for blood poisoning would develop, unless the arm was
amputated. Schleich, not being a surgeon, could not amputate. He could
only seek to calm the man's fears, and carry out the customary
precautions, suction of the wound, etc., but not remove an arm on the
mere assertion of the patient himself. The patient then went to a
specialist, who also declined to amputate. But Schleich felt
uncomfortable about the case, and inquired early the next morning, and
found that the patient had died in the night. And Schleich's verdict
was: Death through Suggestion. And that is an obvious — terribly
obvious explanation. But an insight into the nature of man forbids us
to suppose that this death was due to suggestion in the manner
assumed. If death through suggestion is the diagnosis, there had been a
thorough confusion of cause and effect. For there was no blood
poisoning — the autopsy proved this; but the man died, to all
appearance, from a cause which was not understood by the physicians,
but which must obviously have been deep-seated and organic. And this
deep-seated organic cause had already — on the previous day — made
the man somewhat awkward and clumsy, so that he stuck an inky pen into
his finger, which is an action most people avoid. This was a result of
his awkwardness. But this external and physical clumsiness was
concurrent with an increased inner power of vision, and under the
influence of disease, he foresaw that his death would occur that
night. His death had not the least connection with the fact that he
hurt his finger with an ink-stained pen, although this was the cause
of his sensations, owing to the cause of death which he carried within
him. Thus the whole course of events is merely externally linked with
the internal processes which caused the death. There is no question of
“death through suggestion” here. He foresaw his own death, however,
and interpreted everything that happened, so as to fit into this
sentiment This one example will show you how extremely cautious we
must be, if we are to reach an objective judgment of the complicated
processes of nature. In these matters one cannot take the simplest
facts as a starting point.

Now we must pose this question: Does sensory perception, and all that
resembles such perception, offer us any basis on which to estimate the
somewhat dissimilar influences which are expected to affect the human
constitution, through materia medica?

We have three kinds of influence upon the human organism in its normal
state: the influences through sense perception, which then extend to
the nervous system; the influences working through the rhythmic
system, breathing and blood circulation; and those working through
metabolism. These three normal relationships must have some sort of
analogies in the abnormal relationships which we establish between the
curative media — which we must after all take in some way from the
external world of nature — and the human organism. Undoubtedly the
most evident and definite results of this interaction between the
external world and the human organism, are those affecting the nervous
system. So we must ask ourselves this question: How can we rationally
conceive a connection between man himself and that which is external
nature; a connection of which we wish to avail ourselves, whether
through processes, or substances with medicinal properties for human
healing? We must form a view of the exact nature of this interaction
between man and the external world, from which we take our means of
healing. For even if we apply cold water treatment, we apply something
external. All that we apply is applied from outside to the processes
peculiar to man, and we must therefore form a rational concept of the
nature of this connection between man and the external process.

Here we come to a chapter where again there is in the orthodox study
of medicine a sheer aggregate instead of an organic connection.
Granted that the medical student hears preliminary lectures on natural
science; and that on this preparatory natural science, general and
special pathology, general therapeutics and so forth, are then built
up, but once lectures on medicine proper have begun, not much more is
heard of the relationship between the processes discussed in these
lectures, and the activities of external nature, especially in
connection with healing methods. I believe that medical men who have
passed through the professional curriculum of today, will not only
find this a defect on the theoretical and intellectual side, but will
even have a strong feeling of uncertainty when they come to the
practical aspect, as to whether this or that remedy should be applied
to influence the diseased process. A real knowledge of the
relationship between the remedy indicated and what happens in the
human body is actually extremely rare. So the very nature of the
subject makes a major reform of the medical curriculum imperative.

I shall now try to illustrate the extent of the difference between
certain external processes and human processes, by means of examples
drawn from the former category. I propose to begin with what we can
observe in plants and lower forms of animals, passing on from these to
processes that can be activated through agencies derived from the
vegetable, animal and especially the mineral kingdoms.

But we can only approach a characterisation of pure mineral
substances, if we start from the most elementary conceptions of
natural science, and then go on to the results, let us say, of the
introduction of arsenic or tin into the human organism. But, first and
foremost, we must emphasise the complete difference between the
metamorphoses of growth in the human organism, and in external
objects.

We shall not be able to escape forming some notion of the actual
principle of growth, of the vital growth of and in mankind, and
conceiving the same principle in external entities as well. But the
difference is of fundamental significance. For instance, I would ask
you to observe a very common natural object: the so-called locust
tree, Robina pseudacacia. If the leaves of this plant are cut off
where they join the petioles, there occurs an interesting
metamorphosis; the truncated leaf stalk becomes blunt and knobby, and
takes over the functions of the leaves. Here we find a high degree of
activity on the part of something inherent in the whole plant;
something that we will provisionally and by hypothesis term a “force,”
which manifests itself if we prevent the plant from using its normally
developed organ.

Now, observe, further, there is still a trace in mankind of what is so
conspicuously present in the simple growing plant. For instance, if a
man is prevented for one reason or another, from using one of his arms
or hands for any purpose, the other arm or hand grows more powerful,
stronger, and also physically larger. We must bring together facts
like these. This is the path that leads to the cognition of remedial
possibilities. In external nature these trends develop to extremes.
For instance, this has been observed: A plant has grown on the slope
of a mountain; certain of its stems develop in such a way that the
leaves remain undeveloped; on the other hand the stem curves round and
becomes an organ of support. The leaves are dwarfed; the stem twists
round, becomes a supporting organ, and finds its base. These are
plants with transformed stems, whose leaves have atrophied.
(See
Diagram 6).

Such facts point to inherent formative forces in the plant itself
enabling it to adapt itself, within wide limits, to its environment.
The same forces, active and constructive from within, are also
revealed among lower organisms in an interesting way.

Take, for example, any embryo which has reached the gastrula stage of
development. You can cut up this gastrula, dividing it through the
middle, and each half rounds out and evolves the potentiality within
itself of growing its own three portions of the intestine — the fore,
middle and hind portion, independently. This means that if the
gastrula is cut in two, we find that each half behaves just as the
whole gastrula would have behaved. You know that this experiment can
even be applied to forms of animal life as high in the scale as
earthworms; that when portions are removed from these creatures, they
are restored, the animal drawing on its internal formative forces to
rebuild out of its own body the portion of which it has been deprived.
We must point to these formative forces objectively; not as
hypotheses, assuming the existence of some sort of vital force, but as
matters of fact. For if we observe exactly what occurs here, and
follow its various stages, we have this result. For instance, take a
frog, and remove a portion in a very early stage of development, the
bulk of the mutilated organism replaces the amputated portion by
growing it again. A critic of a materialistic turn of mind, will say;
Oh yes, the wound is the seat of tonic forces, and through these the
new growth is added. But this cannot be assumed.

Suppose that it were the case, and I were to remove a part of an
organism, and a new part grows on the site of the injury (b)
(See
Diagram 7)
through the tonic force (c) located here; then the new
growth should strictly speaking be the immediately adjacent part, its
neighbour in the intact and perfect organism. Actually, however, this
does not happen; if portions of the larval frog are amputated, what
grows from the site of the injury are extremities, tails or even
heads; and in other creatures antennae. Not, that is to say, the
strictly adjacent parts, but those of most use to the organism.
Therefore, it is quite impossible that the normally adjacent structure
develops at the point of amputation through the specially localised
tonic forces; instead, we are obliged to assume that, in these
re-growths or repairs, the whole organism takes part in some way.

And so it is really possible to trace what happens in lower organisms.
As I have indicated the path to follow you can extend its application
to all the cases recorded, and see in all of them, that one can only
achieve a conception of the matter along this line of thought.

And in man, you will have to conclude, however, that things do not
happen in this way. It would be extremely pleasant and convenient to
be able to cut off a finger or an arm, in the certainty that it would
be grown again! But this simply does not happen. And the question is:
what becomes of those forces, growth forces, which show themselves
unmistakably in the case of animals, when it comes to the human
organism? Are they lost in it? or are they non-existent?

Anyone who can observe Nature objectively knows that only by this line
of inquiry can we arrive at a sound conception of the link between
physical and spiritual in man. For the forces we learnt to know as
plastic formative forces, which mould forms straight from the living
substance, are simply lifted out of the organs, and exist entirely in
the soul and spiritual functions.

Because they have been so lifted, and are no longer within the organs
as formative forces, man has them as separate forces, in the functions
of soul and spirit. If I think or feel, I think and feel by virtue of
the same forces that work plastically in the lower animals or the
vegetable world. Indeed I could not think if I did not perform my
thinking, feeling and willing with these same forces, which I have
drawn out of matter. So, when I contemplate the lower organisms, I
must say to myself; the power inherent in them, which manifests as a
formative force, is the same as I carry within me; but I have drawn it
out from my organs and hold it apart. I think and feel and will with
the same powers that are formative and active plastically, in the
lower organisms.

Anyone wishing to be a sound psychologist, whose statements have
substance, and not mere words, as is usual today, would have so to
follow up the processes of thinking, feeling and willing, as to show
that the very same activities in the regions of soul and spirit
manifest themselves on the lower level as plastic formative forces.

Observe for yourselves how we can achieve within the soul things we
can no longer achieve within our organism. We can complete trains of
thought that have escaped us by producing them out of others. Our
activity here is quite similar to organic production; what appears
first is not the immediately neighboring, but one lying far removed.
There is a complete parallelism between what we experience inwardly
through the soul, and the external formative forces and principles of
Nature. There is a perfect correspondence between them. We must
emphasise this correspondence, and show that man faces the same
formative principles in the external world, as he has drawn from his
own organism for the life of his soul and spirit, and which therefore
in his own organism no longer underlie the substance.

Moreover, we have not drawn these elements in equal proportions from
all parts. We can only approach the human organism properly, if we
have first armed ourselves with the preliminary knowledge outlined
here. For if you observe all the components of our nervous system, you
will find the following peculiarity: what we are accustomed to term
nerve-cells (neurons) and the nerve tissue, and so forth, develop
comparatively slowly in the early stages of growth; they are not very
advanced cellular formations. So that we might reasonably expect these
so-called nerve-cells to display the characteristics of earlier
primitive cellular structures yet, they do not do so at all. For
instance, they are not capable of reproducing themselves; nerve-cells,
like the cells of the blood, are indivisible. Thus we find that in a
relatively early stage of evolution, they have been deprived of a
capacity that belongs to cells external to man. They remain at an
earlier stage of evolution; they are, so to speak, paralysed at this
stage. What has been paralysed in them, separates off and becomes the
soul and spirit element. So that, in fact, with our soul and spiritual
processes we return to what was once formative in organic substance.
And we are only able to attain to this because we bear in us the
nervous substances which we destroy or at least cripple in a
relatively early stage of growth.

In this way we can approach the inherent nature of the nerve substance.
The result explains why this substance has the peculiarity both of
resembling primitive forms, even in its later developments; and yet of
serving what is usually termed the highest faculty of mankind, the
activity of the spirit.

I will interpolate here a suggestion rather outside the subject we are
at present considering. In my opinion, even a superficial observation
of the human head with its various enclosed nerve centres, reminds one
rather of lower forms than highly developed species of animal life, in
that the nerve centres are enclosed in a firm armour of bone. The
human head actually reminds us of prehistoric animals. It is only
somewhat transformed. And if we describe the lower animal forms, we
generally do so by referring to their external skeleton, whereas the
higher animals and man have their bony structure inside. Nevertheless
our head, our most highly evolved and specialised part, has an
external skeleton. This resemblance is at least a sort of leit-motif
for our preceding considerations.

Now let us suppose that we have occasion, because of some condition
that we term disease, (I shall deal with this in more detail later) to
bring back into our organism what has thus been removed. If we replace
or restore these formative forces of external nature — of which we
have deprived our organism because we use them for the soul and spirit
— by means of a plant product or some other substance used as a
remedy — we thereby reunite with the organism something that was
lacking. We help the organism by adding and returning what we first
took away in order to become human. Here you see the dawn of what can
be termed the process of healing: the employment of those external
forces of nature, not normally present in man, to strengthen some
faculty or function. Take as an example — purely by way of
illustration — a lung. Here too we shall find that we have drawn away
formative principles to augment our soul and spiritual powers. If we
discover among the products of the vegetable kingdom, the exact forces
thus drawn from the lung and re-introduce them in a case of
disturbance of the lung system, we help to restore that organ's
activity. So the question arises; which forces of external nature are
similar to the forces that underlie the human organs and have been
extracted in the service of soul and spirit? Here you will find the
path, leading from the method of trial and error in therapy, to a sort
of “rationale” of therapy.

In addition to the errors fostered in respect of the nervous system —
which refers to the inner human being — there is another very
considerable error, regarding extra-human nature. This I will just
touch on today and explain more fully later.

During the age of materialism, people accustomed themselves to think
of a sort of evolution of natural objects, from the so-called simplest
to the most complex. The lower organisms were first studied in their
structural evolution, then the more complex; and then attention was
directed to structures outside the organic realm, that is in the
mineral kingdom. The mineral kingdom was envisaged merely as being
simpler than the vegetable. This has led to all those strange
questions and speculations, concerning the origin of life from the
mineral kingdom, a changing over of substance occurring at some
unknown point in time, from a merely inorganic to an organic activity.
This was the Generation Aequivoca or spontaneous generation, which
provoked so many controversies.

However an unbiased examination certainly does not confirm this view.
On the contrary, we must put the following proposition to ourselves.
In a way, just as we can conceive of a sort of evolution from plant
life on through animal life to man, so it is not possible to conceive
of another evolution, from organisms, in this case, plants, to the
minerals, inasmuch as the latter are deprived of life. As I have said,
this is only a hint which will be made clearer in later lectures. But
we shall only avoid going astray here, if we do not think of evolution
as ascending from the mineral through the vegetable and animal forms
to mankind, but if we postulate a starting point in the center, as it
were, with our evolutionary sequence ascending from plant through
animal life to man, and another, descending to the mineral kingdom.

Thus the central point of departure would lie not in the mineral
kingdom, but somewhere in the middle kingdoms of nature. There would
be two trends of evolution, an upward and a downward. In this way we
should come to perceive, in passing downwards from plant to mineral,
and especially — as we shall see — to that particularly important
mineral group, the metals, that in this descending evolutionary
sequence, forces are manifest which have peculiar relationships to
their opposites in the ascending trend of evolution. In short: what
are those special forces inherent in mineral substances, which we can
only study if we consider here the formative forces which we have
studied in lower organic forms, and apply the same methods?

In mineral substances such formative forces manifest themselves in
crystallisation. Crystallisation reveals quite definitely a factor in
operation on the descending line of evolution that is in some manner
interrelated — but not identical — with that which manifests as
formative forces on the ascending line. Then if we bring to the living
organism that force which inheres in mineral substances, a new
question arises. We have already been able to answer a previous and
similar inquiry: if we restore the formative forces that we have
absorbed from our organism by our soul and spiritual activities by
means of vegetable and animal substances, we help the organism thus
treated. But what would be the effect of applying these other,
different, forces coming from the descending evolutionary line, that
is from the mineral world, to the human organism? This is the question
which I will put to you today, and which will be answered in detail,
in the course of our considerations.

But with all this, we have not yet been able to contribute anything of
real help to the question at the forefront of our programme for today,
viz: Can we gather by careful listening a healing process straight
from nature itself?

Here it depends on whether we approach nature with real insight — and
we have attempted to get at least an outline of such understanding —
whether certain processes will reveal their inherent secret. There are
two processes in the human organism — as also among animals, which
are of less interest to us at the moment — which appear in a certain
sense directly contrary to one another, when looked at in the light of
the concepts with which we are now equipped. Moreover these two
processes are to a great extent polar to one another; but not wholly
so, and I lay special stress on this not wholly, so please bear it in
mind to avoid misconstruction of my present line of argument. They are
the formation of blood, and the formation of milk, as they take
place in the human body.

Even externally and superficially these processes differ greatly. The
formation of blood, is, so to speak, very deep seated and hidden in
the recesses of the human organism. The formation of milk finally
tends towards the surface. But the most fundamental difference is that
the formation of blood is a process bearing very strong potentialities
of itself, producing formative forces. The blood has the formative
power in the whole domestic economy of the human organism, to use a
commonplace expression. It has retained in some measure the formative
forces we have observed in lower organisms. And modern science could
base itself on something of immense significance, in the observation
and study of the blood; but it has not yet done so in a rational
manner. Modern science could base itself on the fact that the main
constituents of blood are the red corpuscles, and that these again are
not capable of reproducing themselves. They share this limitation of
potentiality with the nerve-cells. But, in emphasising this attribute
held in common, all depends on the cause; is the cause the same in
both cases? It is not, for we have not extracted the formative forces
from our blood to anything like the same extent as from our nerve
substance. Our nerve substance is the basis of our mental life, and is
greatly lacking in internal formative force. During the whole span of
life from birth, the nerve substance of man is worked upon by or is
dependent on external impressions. The internal formative force is
superseded by the faculty of simple adaptation to external influences.
Conditions are different in the blood, which has kept to a great
extent its internal formative force. This internal formative force, as
the facts show, is also present in a certain sense in milk; for if
this were not so, we could not give milk to young babies, as the most
wholesome form of nourishment. It contains a similar formative
potentiality as the blood; in this respect both vital fluids have
something in common.

But there is also a considerable difference. Milk has formative
potentiality; but lacks a constituent that is most essential to blood,
or has it only in the smallest quantity. This is iron, fundamentally
the only metal in the human organism that forms such compounds within
the organism as display the true phenomenon of crystallisation.

Thus, even if milk also contains other metals in minute amounts, there
is this difference: that blood essentially requires iron, which is a
typical metal. Milk, although also potentially formative, does not
require iron as a constituent. Why does the blood need iron?

This is one of the crucial questions of the whole science of medicine.
The blood actually needs iron (we shall sift and collect the material
evidence for the facts I have sketched today). Blood is that substance
of the human organism, which is diseased through its own nature, and
must be continuously healed by iron. This is not the case with milk.
Were it so, milk could not be a formative medium for mankind, as it
actually is; a formative medium administered from outside.

When we study the human blood, we study something that is constantly
sick, from the very nature of our constitution and organism. Blood by
its very nature is sick and needs to be continuously cured by the
addition of iron. This means that a continuous healing process is
carried on within us, in the essential process of our blood. If the
medical man is “a candidate for Nature's examination,” he must study
first of all, not an abnormal but a normal process of nature. And the
process essential to the blood is certainly “normal,” and at the same
time a process in which nature itself must continually heal, and must
heal by means of the administration of the requisite mineral, iron. To
depict what happens to our blood by means of a graph, we must show the
inherent constitution of blood itself, without any admixture of iron,
as a curve or line sloping downwards, and finally arriving at the
point of complete dissolution of the blood.
(See
Diagram 8, red).
whereas the effect of iron in the blood is to raise the line
continuously upwards as it heals. (yellow line).

There indeed we have a process which is both normal and a standard
pattern to be followed if we want to think of the processes of
healing. Here we can really pass Nature's examination, for we see how
nature works, bringing the metal and its forces which are external to
mankind, into the human frame. And at the same time, we learn how the
blood, which needs must remain inside the human organism, must be
healed and how what flows out of the human organism, namely milk does
not need to be healed, but which if it has formative forces, can
wholesomely transmit them to another organism. Here we have a certain
polarity — and mark well, a certain, not a complete polarity —
between blood and milk, which must have attention and observation, for
we can learn very much from it.